Jon Snow storeroom chapter.....

[nanother]

-Which prophecy was supposed to mean Griff & YG went to Meereen?

-She may have had the Stallion in her but he was killed

and what proof do we have of Mel's actual power? We know she has a handy anti-poison necklace, we know she can glamor people to look different (that seems to be a fairly common trick, pretty soon Arya will do it), and yes she does have "visions" which have hardly been beneficial. The other Red Priests have raised the dead, created awesome fire healed super hands, what has Mel really done that's SO great?

She can birth shadows.

[House Martell]

She can birth shadows.

OK that's pretty good, but still no resurrection or bad-ass smoking burned super hand. Cersei gave birth to Joff, that doesn't make her magic

[lordthade]

There's a scene with Dondarrion that demonstrates that the burning swords are fantasical, but they weaken and break. Sandor proves it. Mel's Lightbringer doesn't. You have a mention/reminder of her using powders and such for her pyrotechnics, but Lightbringer glows wherever Stannis goes with or without Mel. There's some magic there.

I'd point out, too, Mel can't use Stannis again, as both murders she committed with the shadows have taken too much from Stannis. He can't survive another. She hasn't had purpose to resurrect anyone as yet (that we know of), but her magics are still powerful.

I personally wonder if she's not a undead herself... she doesn't eat, doesn't feel cold, and maybe because she doesn't HAVE life she can't give it to others. She has to take from others their lives in order to perform her gifts. She's not a wight/whitewalker, though. The Wall does not repel her. The Wall boosts her powers. However it might be also convoluting the messages and her abilities to understand the fires seems to have slipped a bit since getting to the North.

[House Martell]

There's a scene with Dondarrion that demonstrates that the burning swords are fantasical, but they weaken and break. Sandor proves it. Mel's Lightbringer doesn't. You have a mention/reminder of her using powders and such for her pyrotechnics, but Lightbringer glows wherever Stannis goes with or without Mel. There's some magic there.

I'd point out, too, Mel can't use Stannis again, as both murders she committed with the shadows have taken too much from Stannis. He can't survive another. She hasn't had purpose to resurrect anyone as yet (that we know of), but her magics are still powerful.

I personally wonder if she's not a undead herself... she doesn't eat, doesn't feel cold, and maybe because she doesn't HAVE life she can't give it to others. She has to take from others their lives in order to perform her gifts. She's not a wight/whitewalker, though. The Wall does not repel her. The Wall boosts her powers. However it might be also convoluting the messages and her abilities to understand the fires seems to have slipped a bit since getting to the North.

Beric sword may have broken because it wasn't Sandor's time to die (if the trial by combat theory is at all valid, and clearly there is some higher power at work here)

OK Mel is powerful, I concede. But she needs to step her game up on reading fires if she's going to be player...

[Brucolac]

I didn't pick up on this when reading it, but the irreverence GRRM seems to have for the fantasy genre which typically goes for over the top moments with prophecy, makes me think a casual fulfillment would be in line.

The one caveat is that with ADwD, we have seen Martin try to use several red herrings about Jon Snow and his birth. It could just be another case of GRRM teasing his audience or deliberately being misleading.

[lordthade]

The message I always get is people believe what they want to believe. SOMEONE will be declared Azor A'-whatever and some people will accept, some will not. Davos has witnessed what Mel can do with her god, and yet he's still more attached to his missing fingers than he is to his king's god. Bran's got ample evidence that godswoods and weirtrees are powerful enough, but that won't stop the NW from having a septon-- nor most of the realm. The comet was up for grabs from anyone. The Drowned God is responsible if you're from one area of the world, or the Stranger in another part of the country.

I'm not convinced a "real" AA will show. People look for miracles and ultimately life (and death) go on. The fighting will play out sooner or later.

Death begets life is a common theme. Characters come and go and new ones take their place. I'll be disappointed if AA returns at all, but it's fun to speculate who COULD be. :bowdown:

[The Mother of The Others]

You know those complicated star charts that you turn like a dial to set the month and hemisphere you're in, and then it moves the stars into position like you can expect to see them overhead that night? Well, imagine if you did the rotating part right but you messed up the north/south thing. That's what Melisandre has done. She's looking at everything with her AA-Finder set on "Stannis". So she's seeing everything bass-ackwards. So all her map directions are reversed and she's going left when she should go right. She might snap out of it almost instantly and get as accurate as Moqorro real fast once she figures out her error. It's not as easy as realizing "It's not Stannis." That leaves her without a setting. She has to choose another setting, like "Jon," before she can refocus. Moqorro is focussed on Vic at present, so his readings are in synch for the events of their voyage together. Mel is in synch with Stannis, but she's reading him as if he's AA, so she's getting crosseyed because he's not AA. Moqorro knows Vic is just some jerk and not AA, so Moqorro isn't crosseyed.

I believe we haven't seen the fireworks from her yet. You save the best for last in any proper fireworks show, you know.

[Black Crow]

That's what Melisandre has done. She's looking at everything with her AA-Finder set on "Stannis". So she's seeing everything bass-ackwards.

As summed up by her monologue at the start of her POV when she reminds herself that many a priest has been undone by straining to see what they want to see rather than what the Red God sends

[nanother]

There's a scene with Dondarrion that demonstrates that the burning swords are fantasical, but they weaken and break. Sandor proves it. Mel's Lightbringer doesn't.

It does. Davos sees it discarded and in a very bad shape after the burning of the Gods on Dragonstone.

Edit: I'm not saying Mel's not powerful, I agree that she is. Just nit-picking.

[lordthade]

I understood Davos to have seen ANOTHER sword... one used for a ceremony (I want to say the lighting of the weirwood statues) but that Lightbringer was never actually set on fire. Lightbringer just "glows". The swords set on fire are consumed by the napalm put on them after just a few minutes. Davos saw one of those.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I don't have a copy of the book nearby. :dunno:

[hotweaselsoup]

I understood Davos to have seen ANOTHER sword... one used for a ceremony (I want to say the lighting of the weirwood statues) but that Lightbringer was never actually set on fire. Lightbringer just "glows". The swords set on fire are consumed by the napalm put on them after just a few minutes. Davos saw one of those.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I don't have a copy of the book nearby. :dunno:

It's not entirely clear whether the sword used in the dog-and-pony show Mel orchestrated on Dragonstone (wherein the statues of the Seven were burned) is the same sword that shows up with Stannis thereafter, but I'm inclined to think that it is.

Actually, what's happening with Melisandre's Lightbringer is interesting: the first time we see the sword, it is almost ridiculously fake. It is melodramatically stuck in the Mother's (Maiden's?) breast, and Stannis has to use an oven mitt to pull it from the flames. And then, as if to emphasize the farce of the whole thing, he ends up poking its blackened remains in the dirt. Not a very impressive magic sword at this point. But in each subsequent viewing, the sword gets a little more impressive. It lacks the supposed heat of the true Lightbringer, but it's beginning to glow more brightly each time Stannis reveals it. The last time we see the sword - at "Mance's" burning, iirc - the sword is described as glowing so brightly that it was as if it were "the sun made steel". So, the sword is undergoing a transformation of some sort, and maybe Stannis is undergoing a transformation as well.

[Black Crow]

I personally wonder if Mel's not a undead herself... she doesn't eat, doesn't feel cold, and maybe because she doesn't HAVE life she can't give it to others. She has to take from others their lives in order to perform her gifts. She's not a wight/whitewalker, though. The Wall does not repel her. The Wall boosts her powers. However it might be also convoluting the messages and her abilities to understand the fires seems to have slipped a bit since getting to the North.

Interesting thought.

A lot of us figured out some time ago that Mel and Moqorro are dead and glamoured - and in a way are probably analagous to the White Walkers insofar as they are red-eyed glamours serving R'hllor, while the White Walkers are blue-eyed glamours serving the Others, however the suggestion that she might not be able to pull the resurrection stunt because she has no life to pass on is intriguing. Beric Dondarrion turned up his toes properly after passing on his "flame" to Cat, so presumably the only way Mel, being dead and glamoured, could pass on a "flame" would be by giving up her own.

[Queensmoot]

I took it that lightbringer is getting stronger because Mel and her glamours are stronger on the wall. I'm quite curious to see what happens to her now that Jon is out of the picture. Aren't there more Wildlings on the wall than crows at this point? What does Bowen Marsh think that Tormund is going to do when he hears about this?

The wait for TWOW is going to be a brutal one.

[Blizzard]

Wyverns Or Ice dragons, it is known

[Theo1]

tormund Is going to beat him over the head with his huge member! Har. I want to know what Deloris Edd would say if witnessing such an event.

[Go! Jon Snow]

It's not Mel's visions that are wrong. It's her interpretations of what she sees in her visions.

[Brandon the Epithetless]

tormund Is going to beat him over the head with his huge member! Har. I want to know what Deloris Edd would say if witnessing such an event.

Dolorous Edd: I'm glad the Lord Steward is dying with a smile on his face...Hey does that wildling's manhood look as if something bit the tip off? I wish I get some of that kind of action, seems to me my member is destined to freeze off this winter without having had the chance for some excitement.

[Black Crow]

In the cold night air the wound was smoking. I think the context is clear here: cold air and smoking wound are connected.

There's been a lot of speculation over this phrase with a lot of people insisting that it was actual smoke coming out of the wound and therefore that Mel was frantically working her magic in the background, healing the wounds as they were inflicted Moqorro-style, per Victarion's pork crackling arm.

However by any sensible and rational reading, untainted by an OMG he can't possibly be dead, the context of cold air and hot blood condensing, is the obvious interpretation, and what's more on my umpteenth re-read GRRM uses exactly the same phrase in the fight below the Fist when Sam and Small Paul run into a White Walker:

"It slid away from Paul's axe, armor rippling, and its crystal sword twisted and spun and slipped between the iron rings of Paul's mail, through leather and wool and bone and flesh. It came out his back with a hisssssssss and Sam heard Paul say, "Oh," as he lost the axe. Impaled, his blood smoking around the sword, the big man tried to reach his killer with his hands and almost had before he fell. The weight of him tore the strange pale sword from the Other's grip."

We're told both the White Walker and his crystal sword are very very cold, so the intention is clearly to depict the hot blood condensing/steaming in contact with it, with the word "smoking" simply describing the action of the steam and having no other significance attaching to it, as proposed by some when the same word is used to describe Jon's blood spilling into the cold air.

Just for the record as there are a lot of new faces on the board since this was last discussed at length, there are historical examples of men, such as Ser Adrian Scrope at Edgehill in 1642, surviving multiple wounds due to extreme cold preventing them bleeding to death. Jon is certainly badly wounded, but given the cold and the fact, mentioned earlierin the book, that he's wearing heavy wool and boiled leather (and for all we know a mail shirt as well), those wounds are survivable without requiring Mel to kiss him better.

[BloodOfKingu]

Ser Adrian Scrope

i think asoiaf has gotten under your skin, Sir.

:)

[Black Crow]

i think asoiaf has gotten under your skin, Sir.

:)

Habit, force of habit :bowdown: